


Pragmatic

by ajarofgoodthings



Series: The Grey Area [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Pureblood Society, Pureblood Tradition, Second Person, outside pov, second person narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-09-30 18:32:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10169225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ajarofgoodthings/pseuds/ajarofgoodthings
Summary: The older girls embrace. The boys all shake hands. There's much guffaw about it and a mutual understanding between the girls of general fond exasperation. There's elbowing, and laughter, and a great show of asking for dances. The youngest girl accepts only from the girl in black-burgundy and leads the garden-waltz with confidence. The grey boy makes a pretty pair with the blonde girl, who rolls her eyes at him.What were they before we knew them?





	

Picture this: 

Two young girls; one about twelve, the other a few years younger. The older is blonde, and already has a telltale lankiness that will lead to tall; her features are delicately pretty, save her nose, which darts in a straight, strong line from the center of her face. Her eyes are mostly blue; mostly, because there's a burst in the bottom of her right of deep, dark brown - the anomaly catches your attention, and that of anyone else who looks at her. It's the only proof to be found of her father's family, the shatter of oak-rich dark; the only proof she's related to the other girl, who giggles and shouts as loudly as the elder is silent. She's dark-haired and deep-eyed, and there's a smattering of freckles across a pale nose and cheeks. She's much shorter than the elder, but makes up for the lack of size in obvious personality, and you watch her bolt past the other girl, out of sight.

She reappears in a moment, tugging a boy along. He's tall; but baby-faced, and though dressed like an adult in miniature it's obvious he's around the same age as the girls. He feigns annoyance in being pulled about like a plaything, leaning back to force the younger girl to adjust her weight - and then drops it forward all at once, so she stumbles, and you can hear them laughing when he catches her.

The older girl looks on, seeming older still in her apparent admonishment of the misbehavior. The little one runs over to her, laughing and followed by the boy, and you watch as the girl's look of scolding mirth dissipates into a laugh of innocence, her hand caught up by the boy to have her knuckles kissed. It's an act of adulthood, you think; far too mature for children at play - but you have to see it; there's something to those two that already has a foot in the doorway of grown-up, even in round, rosy cheeks and the awkwardness of limbs not yet fully known.

The boy is finely put together, dressed in gold robes flattered by the warmth of his dark skin and black hair. His eyes flash a little; somewhere between dark themselves and the sunlight-bright of his fabrics; but it could be a trick of the light, a trick of the mind.

All of it could be, of course. A trick of the mind; a lie you're telling yourself - but it does little good to anyone to question the validity of beautiful things. For a proposition to be valid it must only be plausible - but what makes a proposition sound? Well, it must be true - and you can't _know_ something if it isn't true; but you can believe something without knowing it, and there are too many answers as to the proof of what is true; so be pragmatic in this. It's to your benefit to believe in the picture of the boy with the sunlight in his skin, the girl with a shattered eye that's seen too much, and the littlest, who's running off again.

It must be a party, you think. There's noise from downstairs; polite conversation, the pull of strings and hum on reeds of a band warming up, the clink-tink of glasses. Listen to it; let it under your skin a little. There's nothing to be lost in a little suspended disbelief.

This time, the girl comes back with a trio; two boys and a girl. Of the boys, one is as pale as the other is dark - both lean, but the boy like night has a head of height on the other. He wears red robes of wavering inbetween; catching both blood and sunset as the fabric shimmers this way and that.

The pale boy is bleached right through; colourlessly iridescent, hair platinum, eyes a silver that matches his robes, where the only edgings of colour can be found in brilliantly emerald lining. They bump shoulders, the shorter somehow better at looking down his nose - sharing utterances back and forth like they're trying to one-up with the third.

She's shorter than them both, swathed in burgundy so deep it's nearly black and a lavender-purple. The colours are adult; the cut is not.

More halfways. More not-quites. More almosts.

She's a beauty already; blue eyes and black hair and with a smile like she knows something the others don't, fingers decked in rings of purple and black and white. 1The boys are vying for her, it's obvious; the two of them, at least - the first gives a sweet little bow but steps hardly a foot from the blonde who'd told him off in his teasing. You can see that they orbit each other; like celestial bodies in the same gravity - one adjusts and the other compensates. Give, take; the move of the tides under the wake of the moon, and you think it somehow better that you cannot see which is which.

They're children, you think; but somehow, they are not. Even in the smallest's little-girl excitement, you can see that she's not so innocent as she seems. It's a flash here, in a break of a beat; in the dart of her eyes to the house, in the smirk she throws the tall, blood-swathed boy.

They're young without the chance for it; you wonder who's been teaching them; you wonder who took it from them.

The older girls embrace. The boys all shake hands. There's much guffaw about it and a mutual understanding between the girls of general fond exasperation. There's elbowing, and laughter, and a great show of asking for dances. The youngest girl accepts only from the girl in black-burgundy and leads the garden-waltz with confidence. The grey boy makes a pretty pair with the blonde girl, who rolls her eyes at him.

You wonder what they know; of who they are, of who they aren't, of what they came from.

The boy with sunlight skin takes the blonde girl's hand. The burgundy girl considers the pair she's left with in turn, and crosses her arms, and laughs when they groan. The first two girls, different in every way you can see, link arms.

You wonder when they realized they had so much to lose.


End file.
